Capital Punishment Essay Hypocrisy of the Death Penalty

The Hypocrisy of the Death Penalty If there is a desire by the American people to maintain the death penalty, let us at least be spared the hypocrisy of a justification by example. The death penalty is a penalty, to be sure, a frightful torture, both physical and moral, but it provides no sure example except a demoralizing one. It punishes, but it forestalls nothing; indeed, it may even arouse the impulse to murder. It hardly seems to exist, except for the man who suffers it-- in his soul for months and years, in his body during the desperate and violent hour when he is cut in two without suppressing his life. Let us call it by the name which, for lack of any other nobility, will at least give the nobility of truth, and let us†¦show more content†¦Retaliation is related to nature and instinct, not to law. Law, by definition, cannot obey the same rules as nature. If murder is in the nature of man, the law is not intended to imitate or reproduce that nature. It is intended to correct it. Now retaliation does n o more than ratify and confer the status of a law on a pure impulse of nature. We have all known that impulse, often to our shame, and we know its power, for it comes down to us from the primitive forests, In this regard, we French, who are properly indignant upon seeing the oil king in Saudi Arabia preach international democracy and call in a butcher to cut off a theifs hand with a cleaver, live also in a sort of Middle Ages without even the consolations of faith. We still define justice according to therules of a crude arithmetic. *Can it be said at least that the arithmetic is exact and that justice, even when elementary, even when limited to legal revenge, is safeguarded by the death penalty? The answer must be no. Let us leave aside the fact that the law of retaliation is inapplicable and that it would seem just as excessive to punish the incendiary by setting fire to his house as it would be insufficient to punish the thief by deducting from his bank account a sum equal to his theft. Let us admit that it is just and necessary to compensate for the murder of the victim by the death of the murderer. But beheading is not simply death. It is just as different, in essence, from theShow MoreRelatedAn Eye for an Eye: The Death Penalty1553 Words   |  7 PagesThe death penalty has been present, in one way or another, for virtually as long as human civilization has existed. The reasons why are apparent; it is intrinsically logical to human beings that a person who takes the life of another should also be killed. This philosophy is exemplified in the famous Biblical passage, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. 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